Childers: 'I Want to Be a Crew Chief in the Cup Series' Again

Matthew OHaren-Imagn Images

In a Monday interview with SiriusXM NASCAR Radio's SiriusXM Speedway, Rodney Childers opened up about his recent departure from Spire Motorsports, and the veteran crew chief also clarified his aspirations in the wake of walking away from the crew chief duties of the No. 7 Chevrolet.

RELATED: Justin Haley Was Surprised by Departure of Crew Chief Rodney Childers

Childers made it crystal clear that he still has the fire to compete as a crew chief in the NASCAR Cup Series, and the 2014 NASCAR Cup Series champion still has milestones he wants to check off.

"I think in my statement, it was not really clear what I wanted, and I want to be clear in that I want to be a crew chief in the Cup Series like I've been," Childers explained. "I want to get past that 700 races [milestone]. I want to get to that 50-win mark. I want to be with a good team, a good driver that can win races. And I want that to be clear. I'm looking forward to figuring that out over the next six months and hopefully get back in Victory Lane."

Currently, Childers sits 15 starts shy of 700 career NASCAR Cup Series starts as a crew chief, and 10 wins short of 50.

The 48-year-old crew chief says he has had opportunites to latch on at organizations in a competition director role, but he doesn't feel his resume is NASCAR Hall of Fame-worthy yet, which has prevented him from closing the door on crew chiefing in the NASCAR Cup Series ranks.

"I had a couple [of] opportunities last year to go after the competition director thing, and I was kind of just really stuck on -- I feel like, to one day be in the Hall of Fame, I need more wins than 40," Childers said. "And, you know, all that kind of stuff means a lot to me. And I want to keep chasing those numbers, and I want to have more poles, and I wanna have more wins and all that."

As far as his departure from the Spire Motorsports team, Childers feels Spire Motorsports co-owner Jeff Dickerson has summed it up really well. Things simply weren't working between the crew chief and the three-car organization.

Childers felt excited to hit the ground running with Spire Motorsports after a big announcement of his acquisition, and what he felt was a successful offseason. Initially, Childers feels everything was going along fine. But a few races into the nine-race stint, it became clear that things weren't clicking.

"Everything was going fine. You could kind of tell after we got racing a little bit that maybe it wasn't going the way that we all wanted," Childers noted. "You know, and a lot of times, that's performance-based or that can be how things are going at the shop or how things are going at the racetrack, and what's the communication like? And just the chemistry of all of it. It's not one person, it's not two people, you know it's 200 people. Just figuring that out as we went."

The weird feeling between the crew chief and team didn't improve as the races clicked off, and a few weeks ago, things started getting a little tense around the shop.

"It finally [came to] a point where they could kind of tell I wasn't happy, and I could kind of tell that maybe they weren't happy. And it just started falling apart a little bit," Childers admitted. "And I could sense it a little bit. Maybe a couple of weeks before [parting ways], it had kind of [gotten] quiet around. And anytime it gets quiet, you kind of start wondering, you know?"

In nine races together, Childers and the No. 7 Spire Motorsports team recorded a single top 10 finish, and ranked 23rd in the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings at the time that they mutually agreed to separate.

At the end of the day, even though things didn't work out, Childers holds no ill-will toward the Spire Motorsports organization.

"They were super good to me while I was there," Childers said of the Spire team. "They're good people. They have a good race team. It was fun to be in the shop with the truck guys, and I'm going to miss a lot of those guys over there."

What does the future hold for Rodney Childers? Time will only tell that story, but it's clear that the legendary crew chief still wants to help guide a driver and team to victory lane from the crew chief position.